Reese Witherspoon has defended herself after receiving some words of warning online over eating snow.
Yes, you read that correctly. Hollywood A-lister, Oscar winner and multimillionaire Witherspoon likes to eat snow.
Earlier in January, the Legally Blonde and Morning Show star shared a TikTok video showing herself enjoying a “Chococinno” made of snow collected from outside her home, topped with cold brew coffee and chocolate and salted caramel syrups.
Yum.
The internet’s reaction, it’s fair to say, was mixed. We’ve all heard “don’t eat yellow snow”, as one follower commented, but apparently innocent-looking white snow has its own hidden dangers.
“No no no… snow is not made to eat,” one user commented. “U can get seriously sick.”
“I love you Reese, personal anecdote: As someone who grew up in Minnesota, our teachers would always melt snow to show up how dirty it was and not to eat it! Be careful out there,” replied another.
“Am I the only one concerned that she scooped it off of her car?” questioned one follower – although Witherspoon replied to say that actually, the snow was scooped from a cooking grill – “but is that bad?”
And then there was the big question: “What if birds pooped in that snow?”
However, some Tik-Tokers were won over.
“Fallen snow can be very dirty from the air and wind but who cares,” replied one former snow eater. “You only live once. I remember eating snow as a kid.”
“I do this same thing every time it snows, I make snow ice cream, but I grew up eating snow and drinking tap water and drinking out of a hose,” said another.
The star pictured at the Golden Globes with her son Deacon earlier this month. Pic: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
‘You only live once’
Since sharing her recipe, Witherspoon, 47, has posted three further videos answering her concerned followers’ questions.
“There’s so many people on here saying snow is dirty so we went and took snow from the backyard and we microwaved it and it’s clear,” she said. “Is this bad? Am I not supposed to eat snow?”
In another clip, she said: “Okay so we’re kind of in a category of, ‘You only live once’ and it snows maybe once a year here. I don’t know! Also, I want to say something. It was delicious. It was so good.”
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In a final post, Witherspoon addressed her lack of filtering before making the frosty snack.
“I didn’t grow up drinking filtered water,” she said. “We drank out of the tap water. We actually put our mouths on the tap and then sometimes like in the summer, when it was hot, we drank out of the hose, like, we put our mouth on the hose, growing up.”
She then joked, “Maybe that’s why I’m like this”, adding: “So what you’re saying to me is I have to filter the snow before I eat it? I just can’t. Filtered snow. I don’t know how to do that.”
What does science say?
A snowflake begins life as a tiny droplet of “supercooled water” which freezes in the sky to create an ice crystal, the Met Office explains.
“The droplet becomes frozen either because temperatures are sufficiently cold (it would have to be -35C or lower) to freeze to other droplets, or in clouds above -35°C, they can form around a nucleus such as a dust or pollen particle.”
Once the ice crystal has formed, if the conditions are right it will grow to form a snowflake. Scientists say they may also pick up other elements in the atmosphere, including pollutants.
One study led by chemistry professor, Parisa Ariya, from McGill University in Quebec, Canada, in 2016, found that snow absorbs toxic compounds emitted from car exhausts.
But some scientists agree the trace amounts of chemicals found in snow – even in cities with lots of traffic – do not reach harmful levels.
In 2017, a study in Romania found it was safe to eat clean snow that was half a day old, and that it was safer to eat it in the colder months. But by two days old, the snow is not safe to eat, Istvan Mathe, a professor at the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, said at the time.
So there you have it. Assuming she’s not snacking on homemade snowy Choccocinos for every meal, it sounds like Witherspoon is safe for now.